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This year’s deadly earthquake in Mexico City exposed to harsh light what experts and activists had been complaining about for years: Construction in Mexico City often violates safety standards, a practice fueled by corruption.

By Julieta Pelcastre

The collapse of dozens of buildings in Mexico City during an earthquake in September exposed systemic corruption and regulatory failures in the mega-city’s urban building code enforcement. Some 369 people died in the quake. Which struck exactly 30 years after a devastating earthquake killed thousands and pushed the government to overhaul the city’s building codes. Photo courtesy of Blanca Eligio.

Xóchitl Gálvez is head of the city’s Miguel Hidalgo community delegation, which encompasses some of the city’s toniest neighborhoods, including upscale Polanco and Lomas de Chapultepec. When she took office in 2015, she launched an investigation into construction manifests granted to developers by her predecessors.

This fall, Gálvez showed that one company, the company Grupo Inmobiliario Deviratán, built at least three housing complexes with falsified documents, according to records obtained by 100Reporters and Journalists for Transparency.

In Mexico City’s Anzures neighborhood, Deviratán erected a five-story building that was supposed to be three stories tall, on just 430 square meters of land, according to the registry. The developer was granted the right to build four apartments, but built 15 instead.

In addition, payments for development rights never reached the delegation’s coffers, according to Gálvez. “There are delegates who are accustomed to personally giving work manifests to the developers, so that they owe them a favor.”

Deviratán’s owner, Vinod Kumar Mangwani Gidwani, did not respond to numerous requests for comment on the reported irregularities in his construction projects.

“In the world of construction,” complicity and corruption underpin exchanges between authorities and builders, Gálvez said. “As an authority, you can’t claim to be unaware of what is happening in your neighborhood.” The consequences have proved deadly, especially in Mexico. Gálvez blames corruption for the collapse of many buildings after the September earthquake in Mexico that destroyed 38 buildings and claimed 369 lives.

Following the earthquake, city officials disclosed to the Mexican Senate that a staggering 270,000 buildings in the city are susceptible to collapse in earthquakes. The lack of maintenance, the geological characteristics and the conditions of the subsoil in the city are not the only elements that pose risks for the structural integrity of these buildings. Corrupt exchanges between authorities and real estate companies produce a growing chain of irregularities in construction and land use that further compromise building safety.

A 2012 study for the Mexico City government found that just 15 of 150 buildings four stories or taller that were built since 2004 appeared to comply with construction regulations in the Benito Juárez, Cuauhtémoc and Venustiano Carranza neighborhoods.

Through revisions of building plans and other records, the study found that basic structural information was ambiguous or often absent entirely. Roughly 70 percent of the structures had weak floors.

“The developers act like teenagers instead of taking responsibility,” Eduardo Reinoso, lead author of the study, told 100Reporters and Journalists for Transparency.

Sudden Growth and Lax Standards

Dramatic population growth in the 1970s, combined with aggressive public policies for housing between 2000 and 2012, spurred substantial development in the Mexican capital.

Government programs lured residents from shanty towns on the city’s fringes to planned communities. Dozens of cookie-cutter housing developments and apartment buildings quickly emerged. What was slow, well behind the pace of construction, was oversight of construction standards and basic services such as running water.

This disorderly and voracious urban growth led to rampant outlaw construction. Some 4,500 illegally developed buildings popped up in Mexico City alone, according to Josefina MacGregor, president of the civic group Suma Urbana.

Frenetic growth also generated an “escalation” of bribes and illegal payments to public servants, according to Paulina Escobar, head of administration and development at engineering firm APL Ingenieros Consultores. It quickly became “more important to build, sell and fill the pockets of a few, than [to ensure] the physical integrity of people,” Escobar said.

How It’s Supposed To Work

Builders are required to hire Directors Responsible for Works, known by their Spanish acronym DROs, to oversee projects. DROs are selected by fellow architects and engineers, and then certified by the government. But the builders pay DROs for their service, which activists say creates a conflict of interest.

A DRO is responsible for directing, monitoring and ensuring compliance with regulations during construction, with authorization and registration granted by the city’s Housing and Urban Development Ministry, known by its Spanish acronym, SEDUVI. The regulator is also the official body in charge of issuing land use certificates.

DROs are supposed to report errors in building plans or construction. DROs who fail to do so can be suspended, fined, lose their licenses or in the most egregious of cases, face jail time. And, indeed, 61 DROs have been fined since 2012, another 30 were suspended and 17 were stripped of their licenses, SEDUVI chief Felipe de Jesús Gutiérrez Gutiérrez told reporters in September.

The Lone Ranger

While buildings may fall, corruption stands on a firm foundation, built by the many who profit from illicit construction. “Corruption does not end because citizens do not want it to end,” said Gálvez. “It generates a lot of profit.” Of 150 properties the Gálvez’s Hidalgo delegation examined, 30 violated the terms of their construction permits, she said.

Gálvez said Deviratán built two more buildings in the neighborhood using false documents. Salvador Ximénez Esparza, a public notary based in the faraway community of Chalco of Díaz Covarrubias, some 25 miles from the construction site, issued deeds for the buildings.

Official records showed that architect Juan Luis Llano Gutiérrez certified to the city government that the project was done properly, according to documents obtained by 100Reporters and Journalists for Transparency.

In an email, Llano Gutiérrez told 100Reporters and Journalists for Transparency that he resigned as DRO for the project in September 2016, and no longer has any relationship to the building, located at Gutenberg 126. “I’m not in a position to comment on this, because there are apparently investigations and legal proceedings in progress in relation to this property.”

Mexican building regulations state that builders must deliver the work according to the project manifest authorized by the delegation.

The Miguel Hidalgo delegation has filed a criminal complaint against Ximénez Esparza for issuing deeds with false documents. In June 2017, the government of the State of Mexico revoked his appointment as public notary.

Earthquakes and Institutionalized Corruption

“The problem of corruption in Mexico is not of the people, it’s of the system,” said Darío Ramírez, spokesman for the Mexican non-profit Against Corruption and Impunity. “As long as the system does not change, we’ll have lone rangers [like Xóchitl Gálvez] trying to do things right. The problem is that the next delegation chief can do the opposite.”

The Miguel Hidalgo, Benito Juárez, Cuauhtémoc and Venustiano Carranza neighborhoods – or delegations – comprise the financial, educational and governmental heart of Mexico City. These same delegations are home to an explosion in real estate development that appears to have fostered a growing population of corrupt public servants, land owners and builders, according to Salvador Mejía, specialist in anti-corruption issues at anti-money laundering firm Asimetrics.

This unholy alliance was exposed by the damage caused by the September quake.

Reckoning after earthquake

The impact of the earthquake not only brought down schools, housing units, shops and offices but also highlighted the lack of supervision over construction as an outgrowth of corruption. The 2012 study for the Mexico City government concluded that “nobody worries about doing things right” and that the city government was “disengaged.” “Very ambitious” architectural projects with poor structural engineering plagued the city, the study found. The authors compared construction to traffic in Mexico City: laws are there, but disorder ensues for lack of enforcement.

The lax standards threaten safety, and access to decent housing. Official inaction in the face of flagrant violations of regulations encourages impunity and leaves citizens no recourse in the courts.

Following the earthquake, the Mexican daily El Financiero asked two structural architects and a civil engineer to review the building plans and debris from one of the fallen buildings, in the Benito Juárez neighborhood. They found that the five-year-old building’s load-bearing slabs were weak, steel support beams were damaged or nonexistent, and the builder used thinner rods than specified. The building was supported by corner columns, but no interior columns.

Two people died in the collapsed San José residential complex. The building’s owner, who was also the DRO on the project, was arrested in October and charged with homicide.

Nearby, a 40-year-old building that partially collapsed in the September 19 quake is likely headed for demolition. Blanca Eligio, owner of the apartments, said her building might have resisted the quake if authorities had suspended work earlier in the year, while heavy machines carried out an excavation next door.

“In Mexico City, there is no rule of law or justice,” said Eligio’s husband, Óscar Herrera. One person died in the building because of the earthquake.

In the Hipódromo Condesa neighborhood, one building damaged in the earthquake featured an unauthorized heliport as of 2016, prompting neighbors to speculate that the heliport had compromised the building. In November, city authorities dismantled the landing pad.

“Nobody sanctioned, nobody detained and no official removed,” said Mony de Swaan, owner of an apartment in a neighboring building.

The Attorney General’s office opened more than 180 investigations for damages following the September 19 quake, including some against builders.

In the last five years, residents of the megalopolis have presented more than 7,190 complaints for violations of construction norms before the Environmental and Territorial Ordinance Attorney’s Office (PAOT). The highest number of complaints came from Cuauhtémoc with 1,089, Benito Juárez with 952 and Coyoacán with 878. Between 2012 and October 20, 2017, the oversight office identified 138 buildings that exceed the levels or heights designated by the delegations and urban development experts.

Officials at PAOT declined requests for comment for this article, as did the Ministry of Urban Development and Housing (SEDUVI). PAOT did not offer any justification for not giving the interview. SEDUVI canceled scheduled interviews on three occasions.

Collusion and power

A wide-ranging 2015 study titled Mexico: The Anatomy of Corruption showed that corruption is the third-biggest concern among Mexicans, with regard for real estate developers deeply negative.

Property development has long been vulnerable to money laundering by organized crime groups and drug traffickers, according to Mejía, the anti-corruption specialist. “You cannot understand the power of criminal structures without the collusion of property developers and notaries.”

A common practice, according to Mejía, is for businessmen to offer local officials a “gift” of perhaps two million pesos in exchange for authorization to begin construction, plus subsequent payments throughout the life of the project or beyond.

Gustavo García, a lawyer who last year joined neighbors in suing a builder for a project in the New Polanco neighborhood, said builders pay $530 per apartment to intermediaries with contacts in local government to obtain permits and to avoid inspections or work stoppages.

If a major problem arises, such as the death of a worker on the job, an extra fee is paid so that the problem “does not escalate,“ said García. The class action suit, which alleges that the developer failed to meet legal and structural standards to prevent leaks of the hydraulic system in departments, frontage and basements, is still underway.

Corruption allows buildings to go up where they shouldn’t, and excludes the public from participating in the design of the city, explains the activist MacGregor. Rather, the public finds itself having to “defend the city from local government who should ensure individual guarantees and preserve the rule of law.”

Despite the danger, demand for new housing in Mexico City continues to rise. In the third quarter of 2017, more than 8,300 homes were sold, 55 percent of which were in the Mexican capital, a 10 percent increase over the same period a year before. The highest concentration of real estate projects is in the western and southern areas of the Mexican capital, accounting for 61 percent of all active real estate developments, according to a report by the Tinsa México consultancy.

And money continues to flow into government coffers. According to information provided by Mexico City’s Finance Ministry in response to a public information request placed by 100Reporters and Transparency International, the government received almost $2.3 million, between 2012 and June 2017, just for issuing zoning permits.

Built to Fail was produced in collaboration with Journalists for Transparency, a project of Transparency International.

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Julieta Pelcastre

Julieta Pelcastre is an independent journalist based in Mexico City. She has over 20 years experience in investigative journalism. Julieta’s work has been featured in numerous publications related to national security issues, including Knight Ridder and Cox Newspapers and the Center for Public Integrity, among others. For the past six years she’s been reporting on the US military cooperation efforts and collaboration in Latin America, transnational organized crime and international security affairs for US military publications. In her spare time she enjoys literature, exploring the city with her son and taking long walks with her dog.

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Around the table are two Syrians who fled the war, one Cameroonian who says he wanted to escape the Anglo-French conflict in his homeland, two Afghans, one a former top-ranking police officer, an Egyptian and a Sri Lankan who wanted to go anywhere where he could make enough money to help his family. Migrants who arrive in Ecuador from Africa, Asia and the Middle East face a steep learning curve: it might be relatively easy to enter the country, thanks to Ecuador’s liberal open-border policy, but finding work here and learning Spanish can be difficult. Today their teacher is translating between Arabic, Spanish and English. “Market”? asks one. “Souk” replies another member of the group, while a fellow student does a quick translation into Pashtu.

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A little piece of Nigeria, in QuitoAs the night closes in, Grace, a 25-year-old law graduate from Cameroon, dashes between a barbeque out on the street and the kitchen in the small Nigerian restaurant where she is working the night shift, as a television showing an African football league plays in the background. She wears a dark top, and her hair pulled back, as she fans the tilapia grilling on the coals. When she was denied a Canadian visa, despite having a scholarship, she decided she still wanted to leave Cameroon, where she complains of a lack of jobs and opportunities for the country’s English-speaking minority. With three friends, she bought a ticket heading west for Ecuador where she heard she could enter with her invitation to study at a language school. She soon converted to a missionary visa, and now works here and sings in the choir at a church up the hill, teaching Sunday school at the weekends. Like many of her customers, she also wants to travel north to the US or Canada, but only with the correct papers. “If you go without papers and through the jungle, you might be lost. Then my family is lost as well.”

The Afghan police officerAsadullah, a former police officer, spent 31 years training new recruits and fighting terrorist groups in his country. Among the documents he smuggled out with him is a photograph of him with Robert Gates, the former US Secretary of Defence, paperwork from a training programme at the National Defence University in Washington DC, and training certificate from the George C Marshall centre in Europe, signed by the German defence minister.

His career had been high-profile and illustrious, but while that brought recognition from the Americans and their allies, it also brought him the unwelcome attention of the Taliban and other extremist groups.

For three years before he fled, he says terrorists were calling him saying he needed to end his work with the police. “Come and work with us,” they’d coax. When he refused, someone tried to throw acid on his child at school – that was when he decided to leave.

Today the family are renting a spacious flat in central Quito, with a big beige sofa and swept wood floors. A big TV is mounted on the wall behind him, and one of his children brings in sweet tea and fruits. His wife and six of his children are with him, awaiting a decision from the migration authorities on their asylum case. For the sake of his children – who all speak English – Asadullah wants to go to the US.

“I want to go to America, but it’s a process: it will take a lot of time,” he says. “We have been waiting to get an answer. I only came here because the bad people wanted to kill us. I’m just here so I’m safe.” He considered going to Europe, but considered the route there more dangerous. “Many Afghan people wanted to go to Europe, to Turkey, but many people died in the sea.”

The ArtistMughni Sief’s paintings once made him a well-known artist in his native Syria: he taught fine art in a top university, and was invited to Lebanon to show his work. But since the war, and his decision to flee, his paintings have taken on a darker tone. One , “Even The Sea Had A Share Of Our Lives, It Was Tough” touches on the horrors so many Syrians have seen as they try to flee to safety.

“This painting is about Syrians crossing the sea to go to Europe from Turkey. I put this fish head and cut the head off to show the culture of ISIS. This here is the boat people,” he explains in his spartan apartment in Ecuador’s capital, Quito. “Syria was empty of people, and there are so many people dying in the sea.”

From the windows of his bedroom-come-studio, you can see the mountains, washing hanging in the sunshine on a neighbours balcony, beige tiles. Behind him the bed sheets – which came with the house – are adorned with images of teddy bears and the phrase “happy day.”

In the corner is a small, rolling suitcase in which he brought his wood carving tools, crayons, and charcoals from Syria: everything from his old life that he dared bring without alerting attention that he was leaving the country. In a small backpack he bought a Frederick Nietshce paperback, a birthday present from a friend, and a book he bought in Syria: “Learn Spanish in 5 days”. He didn’t bring any photos, in case his bag was searched.

Frustrated by restrictions he faced as a Syrian in Lebanon, he started to research other places where he might make a new start. He read that Ecuador was “one of the few countries that don't ask for a visa from Syrians. I had problems leaving Lebanon, and in El Dorado in Colombia but at Quito I came in no problem. The only question was: why are you coming to Ecuador, do you have money? I said nothing about asking for asylum so they just gave me a tourist visa.”

Soon after he made his asylum application, and today, he paints while he waits for a decision. “Before the war I was focused just on humans, on women, but when the war started that changed, and I began focusing on the miserable life that we live in Syria,” he says as he arranges three paintings on the bed. In one, he explains, is a woman who can’ face something in her life, so prefers to stop speaking.

TrickedAlthough many of the migrants that make their way to Ecuador are able to travel more independently than those making the journey across the Mediterranean, examples abound of exploitation of some who arrive here. Mohammad, for example. He’sa 24-year-old from Sri Lanka who first tried his luck in Malaysia, but was cheated by a travel fixer who took his money while promising him a work visa that never materialized. When he was arrested for working without the proper documents, a friend had to come and pay the police to get him out. Travelling west, to Ecuador, after religious violence broke out in his hometown, he says he paid someone he knows to help sort out his travel, unsure of how much he took as a cut. When he flew in, alongside a Sri Lankan family, the agent arranged for him to be picked up by an unknown woman who charged each of them again to take them to a hostel. He is now renting a room from a man he met at the mosque. Every day continues to be a struggle, he said.

“At home, I saw so many troubles each day. I decided to come here thinking maybe things will be good. But I did one week working in a restaurant, they treated me like a slave. For three months I was searching for work. They are good people here but I have no opportunities here. Seven months I have nothing, I’m wasting my time.”